Princesses and cotton candy. Mickey ears and Fast Passes. One week and five exhausted TPHers.

Oh, it was fun. Magical. But there was just enough stress to remind me that the magic was just pretend and we were still living real life. But when real life includes roller coasters and roaming princesses, you just gotta go all day to soak it all up. And we did. And now I am feeling much like my youngest child in this photo–the one slumped over in utter exhaustion, asleep in the stroller. So, I’ll be back next week after I take this week off to recover from the most magical place on earth.

Who can resist an estate sale? And for me it isn’t just about the stuff for sale, it is also about going into a house I haven’t explored before. And this little 1940s house in my neighborhood didn’t disappoint. Have you ever seen a bath tub like this before? Ensconced in pink?

Now I know why all those men in the 1950s were so macho. All those pink-tiled bathrooms…

The first tip for painting with children is the MOST important one. It will allow you–the adult in charge–to be carefree, happy, and relaxed to thoroughly enjoy the experience with the little ones.

Find a place where it is okay to get messy. Otherwise you will be stressed about the paint getting on the furniture or floors or on the beautiful new wallpaper you just had installed. Believe me, that kind of limitation will kill the experience.

Now that you’ve found the place to paint, everyone–including the adult–puts on paint clothes. Now everyone is ready to get messy and you won’t freak when paint smeared hands tug at your shirt.

I like to have my children paint on canvas occasionally. They think it is special, and it gives them the chance to experiment with opacity and blending that they don’t get to do with watercolors on paper. I sometimes buy them the canvases with the deep, wrapped profiles–some manufacturers call these “gallery wrapped.” (Like the one my daughter is working on in the above photo.) These type of canvases do not need frames and are ready to hang as soon as the paint is dry. Canvas boards are less expensive and are fun for playing around on–and they can be framed when a masterpiece is created.

Now it’s time to gather the paint.

Children need paint with lower viscosity so their brushstrokes flow freely. Craft paints are very fluid and also are cheap so you can have lots of colors without the mixing, which can be tedious for kids. House paint also works well for large areas and dripping. I rarely bring out my acrylic art paints for my kids because they are very thick and much more expensive.

Give the child lots of colors to choose from. Do not choose paint for the child that only matches the rug or the sofa or the painting will disappear into the room. I generally only give them access to brights since children inevitably blend them all together to make “mud” anyways.

With the right place, clothes, and materials–we’re ready to paint!

Before you invite the child to paint, completely cover the canvas in any color but white. Sometimes kids forget to cover all the areas of a canvas when they are painting; and white canvas peeking through looks like amateur art, but layered art looks infinitely more interesting. It doesn’t matter what color the base painting is done in since only bits of it will show through the finished product.

Here is my oldest when he was four years old, working on a gestural piece. I painted it orange beforehand and he layered on top of my base painting. You can see on his palette that I squeezed out multiple colors–not a good idea for a child this young because they love to swirl them together to get that mud color. And while it is good to have some of that ugly mud color in the painting, you do not want the whole piece to be a muddy mess. I’ve since learned that when painting with toddlers, it is best to give them their selected colors only one or maybe two at a time.

And while I do let them go at it willy nilly, I sometimes offer up suggestions when they are painting. Painting is good physical fun to smoosh and smear, but it is also a good time to learn how to appreciate interesting marks and color relationships that they are creating. I might say, “You have a blank spot here–why don’t you add color there?” or “There is nothing in this lonely corner, why don’t you give it some company?” or “I really love those marks you are making! Don’t paint over those beauties!” or “Those two colors look so good together. I don’t think I would change anything you’ve done in that area.”

Give them different brushes to use. An interesting painting has varied sizes of mark making. Different brushes also gives them experience on how to use different tools for different applications.

Here is the painting all finished. I did go over a few of my favorite marks he made with a brighter color to make them pop more. Aren’t kids just natural gestural painters?

For this painting, I let my son apply the base paint, in two colors. He filled in around the orange with pink so we could preserve the marks he made in orange. I had planned for the kids to draw on this in oil pastels (like crayons) so the base painting had to be more intentional since it was going to show.

Because oil pastels aren’t messy, I let them go at it in the dining room while I cooked dinner (she’s 2 and he’s 4 in this photo). By the time we sat down to eat, the painting was finished and up on the wall.

For a real winner with the kids, you can set them up for some drip paintings. Open up several paint cans at one time and rotate one new color every two minutes or so, revisiting colors if desired.

These turned out so fun–but here I broke my rule of base painting the canvas beforehand because it was a spontaneous activity that day. All that white canvas board showing through drove me so crazy that I went back after the kids finished and painted all those little crevices a color. Call me Crazy.

As the kids get older, their imagery becomes less abstract since they become obsessed with painting something. The same tips apply, but if the children are painting regularly, they are picking up all these skills and implementing them along the way.

This castle painting, by my son when he was 7, is a good example of filling in the whole canvas and layering paint for depth. These days he is a reluctant painter but still enjoys the time with me–but it is hard to get anything more than stick people from him. I love this painting, on canvas board, for the interesting way he composed the interior of his castle–which makes up for the fact that it is squarely in the middle of the canvas. The painting has great color, too, since he has finally mastered the “wash the brush, dry, and dip into another color” skill.

My daughter, age 5 when she painted this, naturally flows with the paint. This is her, art without instruction, in acrylic and oil pastels (I went in afterward in oil and did the pink, orange, and white in the sky and the light green behind the princess). And then…

…this is her painting almost a year later with instruction. I was blown away to see what a little technical academic instruction produced when combined with her natural talent. While I definitely prefer her princess painting to the lone chicken, it is exciting to see what will come of her awesome combo of creativity and skill in the future.

Sometimes my kids produce great art on more temporary surfaces, such as the MagnaDoodle. This is my son’s drawing of the ABCs when he was 3.

I loved it and snapped a photo before he could wipe it clean.

Later I used the photo to make a painting on canvas.

I also plan to do this on a large canvas that my daughter doodled on when she was 4 by blowing up one of her hilarious princess drawings on top of the doodles. A great way to preserve the best of their paper art!

But sometimes their doodles are too beautiful to get lost in the stack of printer paper art. This allover drawing my daughter did at 5 was too good to file away, on printer paper with marker. I love that she cover every square inch of the paper. Encourage your children to fill up the surface and pay attention to the edges.

She also loves to cut paper. What to do with all those paper hearts and snowflakes she lovingly cut and colored? She and her younger brother painted the basecoat on each canvas–and here I go against my earlier tip on the white showing through, but I liked seeing the solid blue disintegrate into the brushstrokes on the bottom, that I told them to stop painting and leave a partial background. Next we layered the hearts on top with a coat of Modge Podge. The geometric shapes were an assignment from her math class that we mounted on blue cardstock.

Hey, there! I’m sorry to just fall off this week. I woke up on Sunday not feeling well at all and by the time I felt better to write up the post I promised, well, then I had an intense work bee to attend at the loft.

I cleaned, moved stuff in, painted, cut Flor squares (not easy), and just generally worked myself into feeling bad again. But I feel GREAT that I accomplished so much. Chris is officially finished with the construction–hooray! Just a few more things to do and it will be up and running.

And when it is, I’ll stop teasing with these coy shots.

Little Kitty hangs in the loft bunkroom. My son drew that on a piece of plywood that I then cut out for him to paint. How’dya like to wake up to that crazy cat staring you down?

Oh, and speaking of kid art. I owe you a post on paint tips with kids! I have learned my lesson to not promise any post until it is written and scheduled to post. So, it IS written and SCHEDULED to post on Monday, even if I am sick. I hope it is helpful!

I knew it! Just when I promise you a tip-filled child art post on Monday, I get sick. I feel much like the way I look in the above photo, a portrait of me done by my son when he was 5. He drew my eyebrows dead-on. So now I promise you the post whenever I’m feeling better.